The field of this invention is bottle decapping devices for removing twist-type bottle caps from bottles.
Bottle filling operations sometimes require that caps be removed from bottles. For example, if the bottles are short-filled, that is, not filled full enough, the caps may have to be removed so more can be added or so that the bottles can be emptied, washed and refilled. For massive production volumes, the number of bottles requiring cap removal can result in an extremely tedious and time consuming manual task.
Machines to remove caps, and particularly twist-type caps, from bottles have been developed. Generally, they have involved relatively complicated apparatus. Another problem has been that the bottle caps, being metal and having corrugated or fluted sidewalls, are quite abrasive and therefore caused considerable wear in cap contacting parts of the decapping apparatus. The caps caused considerable wear because the cap contacting parts were made of a relatively soft material. The material was soft so that it would not ruin the finish of bottles from which the cap was removed while the bottle was still in contact with the decapping apparatus. Therefore, a need exists for a low-cost bottle decapper which reliably and automatically removes twist-type bottle caps, resists wear and preserves the finish of bottles during the decapping operation.